The thickness of the top aluminum (Al) layer on fuses tend to be thick, i.e. about 12,000 Å, because of the mechanical strength requirements for probing and bonding. If the fuse is formed with thick a top Al layer, the yield of the fuse operation, e.g. blowing open by a laser beam, tends to be low.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,261,873 B1 to Bouldin et al. describes a metal fuse with thick and thin segments.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,100,118 to Shih et al. describes a fuse guard ring method and structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,100,116 to Lee et al. describes a method to form a protected metal fuse by forming protection layers completely around the fuse.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,835 to Sacarisen et al. describes a process for making a metal fuse link in a MOS or CMOS process.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,037,648 to Arndt et al. describes a semiconductor structure including a conductive fuse and a process of fabricating the same.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,936,296 to Park et al. describes integrated circuits having metallic fuse links.